A recent CNet story “Apple deluged by police demands to decrypt iPhones” was recently picked up by slashdot.org. The original article is a good read of one of the pain points in today’s iOS investigations, but the comments on the Slashdot.org post are downright illuminating. A veteran digital investigator probably already knows: iPhone 4S, iPhone 5 and iPad version 2+ passcode and encryption have been virtually impossible to bypass. Even built-for-purpose mobile device forensic companies plainly admit, iOS forensics has been advancing slowly.

Guidance Software has provided support for mobile devices in a number of ways over the years. Our first incarnation of mobile support materialized in a big way in 2007 with EnCase Neutrino, a hardware and software product designed to enable the forensic acquisition of hundreds of then current flip phones and smart phones in a manner compatible for correlation with EnCase case data. This product came in a jumbo sized carry case and included a hardware mobile device write blocker, a patented signal blocking faraday bag, and dozens upon dozens of adapter cables for countless mobile devices.

As time marched on the demand for flip phone capabilities diminished, and the use of smartphones became more and more pervasive both “on the street” and in use by corporate and government employees. As such, at the beginning of 2011 we began to focus exclusively on enhancing smartphone support to include things like iTunes and Blackberry backup files, and deleted file recovery for Android, Windows Mobile and HP Palm OS. By the end of 2011, the number of smartphones in use in the United States overtook the use of traditional flip-phones, validating our approach to the market.

Early in 2011 we announced our replacement product focused on smartphones, EnCase Smartphone Examiner. We’ve taken our leadership in the forensic market one step further by enhancing mobile device support to include tablets, as well as integrating the entire capability into the EnCase Enterprise remote investigation solution.

With EnCase Enterprise 7 smartphone and tablet support is included out-of-the-box, supporting our commitment to enable our customers to acquire and analyze data from the broadest range of devices possible. To learn more about integrated smartphone and tablet support with EnCase Enterprise 7, check out this video: